Friday, June 5, 2009

The House panel that oversees NASA’s budget recommended this week that the space agency receive $18.2 billion in funding next year -- chopping about $500 million from President Barack Obama’s request of nearly $18.7 billion.

Most of the cuts were aimed at NASA’s human spaceflight program. Obama wanted to give NASA’s exploration division – which is developing a replacement to the space shuttle – a budget of nearly $4 billion, but that was reduced to about $3.3 billion under the alternative pushed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee of Commerce, Justice and Science. It's also $212 million less than what the division received this year.

The agency’s science budget saw a slight increase, however, as the panel opted to fund that division at $4.496 billion, rather than $4.477 billion. To become law, the budget must pass Congress and be signed by the president, a process that should take months to complete.

So why did the CJS subcommittee reduce the exploration budget? The panel’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-West Virginia, said he didn’t want spend extra dollars on NASA’s newest rocket until he hears the results of a blue ribbon panel tasked with deciding how NASA should replace the shuttle.